A Series of Disappointments.

A Series of Disappointments. Photographs by Stephen Gill. Nobody, London, 2008. 78 pp., 36 black and white illustrations, 9x11¾". First edition, 3000 available with three different covers.

Publisher's Description:
"These betting slips were discarded in and around many betting shops (71 at the time of publication) in the borough of Hackney in north-east London. The average number of betting shops in other London boroughs is 23.

Each of these papers began as hope, were shaped by loss or defeat, then cast aside. These new forms perhaps now possess a state of mind, shaped by nervous tension and grief. After these images were made, little autopsies were performed on the papers to reveal the failed bets held within.

If betting shops move into places previously occupied by banks or solicitors, they are classed as financial services and don’t have to apply for any special permit. In such numbers, they are beginning to feel like a burden around a borough that is trying to improve itself and the lives of its residents, and to shake off its bad reputation."

Dancing Walls.

Dancing Walls. Photographs by Thomas Kellner; introduction by Alison Nordström. Thomas Kellner, 2008. 81 pp., Numerous color illustrations., 8x8"

"Kellner's mosaic renderings of the world's buildings and interiors are achieved through a succession of carefully orchestrated individual shots that yield an overall image of architectural liquidity--a kind of photo-cubism [...] through Kellner's lens, wonderfully obsessive and colorful.

This book--published by a consortium of the galleries in which Kellner will be exhibiting through 2008--documents his recent shift away from iconic architectural monuments to the somewhat fussier interiors of museums, libraries and palaces."

A Clearing.

A Clearing. Photographs by Raymond Meeks. Nazraeli Press, Tucson, 2008. 48 pp., 34 duotone plates., 12x17".

Publisher's Description:

"Following up his richly emotive debut collection, Ray Meeks expands the range of his vision with equally stunning technique, suggesting visual rhymes between the sentient and the inanimate, between stratigraphic lines and telephone wires, between a bulldozer’s tread marks and a boy’s ribcage. Whereas his earlier book, Sound of Summer Running, invited us inward, into the expressive interiors of family and place, a Clearing presents us with a world that averts its face, a world we haven’t yet learned to read, where meaning still seems to be gathering itself, where verticality is a sign of defiance. Figures in the landscape appear so isolated, they take on mythic force. The sky is resistant as eyes turned back in a head. Meeks’s camera records the naked geological and human assertion of presence against the flattening insistence of time, erosion, and poverty. In a Clearing, the world speaks itself in a language of origins: stone and child and woman and man cry out from elemental silence, Look, I am here. The first printing of this gorgeously-produced artist’s book is limited to 500 numbered and signed copies, each with an original print on the back cover."

"Hardcover edition now out-of-print. This limited edition of A Clearing comes with a gelatin silver print (approximately the size of the hardcover book) housed in a clam-shell box in an edition of 25."

Exploitive?

Hermes A/W 2008-2009 campaign.

This is so very very beautiful - but does it not also feel exploitive?

Ark.

Ark. Photographs by Adam Fuss. Self-published., New York., 2007. Unpaged, 34 UV coated, color photographs. Limited edition of 333 copies, signed and numbered.

"Large folio; 34 UV coated, color photographs; full-black leather; blind-stamped colophon on orange hand-made paper, laid into black hand-made paper covered clamshell box, black ribbon tie; illustrated label affixed to box recto." Just beautiful.

Lovely Susie Bubble

Photo of Susie from Style Bubble.

The blog Style Bubble is so way, way above the "normal" fashion blog I'm even hesitating calling it so. Her posts are always beautiful, unique, well-research and well-written. And here personal style is just pure beautiful. Go and visit!